Posts Tagged ‘ballyhaunis’

Righto. Here are the answers to the questions posed in the Deep in the rough article on Saturday.

As I said in that post, I hate using superlatives. However, as well as having possibly the worst quality photocopying for the picture round, this quiz also featured the definitively dearest raffle I’ve seen at a table quiz. The going rate for the past number of years (around here anyway) is €2 for a “line”, with three of them offered for €5. Here, €5 got you one line of tickets. Of course, these days, the lines are put into the bucket whole, so this is really one ticket.

Buying multiple lines of tickets seems preferable, normally, for two reasons: it increases your sense of having a chance (you have three tickets in the hat, after all) and it means that, should you win something early, you could still win again. 🙂

Not so on this night in Ballinlough where the usual three lines would have cost you €15!

Last year I took part in a very enjoyable quiz at Ballyhaunis Golf Club so I was quite excited to hear that the same club were hosting another event this year. Confusingly though, it was taking place in Ballinlough – which is a completely different town, in case the different names didn’t already make that clear. 🙂

Things started going wrong, however, when Ger arrived with too many team-mates! There’d been a bit of a miscommunication earlier in the week when I took the heretofore unheard-of step of sourcing potential quizzers for our table. We actually had seven people mooted for the team at one point and I stated that, if we had one more, we could have two tables. However, we went our separate ways then and, while I informed folks that we wouldn’t need their services, Ger went off and found that “extra” team-mate!

So we had five people. I got on the phone and called in my father-in-law, who I knew was keen to take part. He arrived and we let the organisers know that we’d be hoping to find two other folks to make up a team. Fairly promptly we were sorted out. Joe and Rita, a nice couple from ‘out the road’ had come in to the quiz on the off-chance that they could get on a team. As Ger had brought a car-load of family members, he stuck with them and myself and the father-in-law teamed up with the locals.

I will be putting up two blog posts today as I’ve had a very notable weekend, quiz-wise.

However, there’s no point putting the cart before the horse. Some of you are waiting on the answers from last Friday’s post, The song remains the same, and I will put those online first.

A funny thing happened last Thursday night at the quiz. When we were asked “What is the largest lake in the Republic of Ireland?” debate ensued between proponents of two answers: Lough Corrib and Lough Ree. Someone came up with a genius solution: “Let’s pop outside and look at the map on the wall.” Our pub, The Corner Bar, does indeed feature a large map on its gable wall.

So, off our intrepid researcher went. He came back in about 10 seconds. “Erm, it’s just a map of Mayo!”

This time last year*, The Corner Bar team scored 88/100 in the Ballyhaunis Inter-pub quiz. A good score you’d think. However, it turned out that our efforts were nowhere near good enough as the winners got 99 points.

Believe or not, the exact same scenario was played out again last night when we emulated our score of last year. And, yet again, it turned out we were 11 points behind the winner. Winners, actually, as there was a tie at the top. Paddy Phillip’s and The Hazel had to go through an extra round before the former was declared the winner.

The winning score in this round was never announced so I can’t say how close our 7/10 was. Not that it matters, of course. Our 88/100 was only good enough to finish third-last in the field of 12!

The annual Inter-Pub Quiz takes place in Ballyhaunis, Co Mayo, on Thursday night next at 9pm. Indeed, it is the opening event in this year’s Ballyhaunis Summer Festival.

For those who didn’t see my report on last year’s event, this quiz is quite a novel one. Basically, everyone who wants to take part gets in to their pub of choice by 9pm. There is only one answer sheet per pub so, thus, everyone who is inside the door is on that pub’s team. The pub’s radio is then tuned to a local, community frequency and the questions are read out over the airwaves. The quiz gets physical in between rounds as each pub has to dispatch a runner to return their answer sheet back to quiz HQ.

Last year’s event produced some amazing final scores. At the time, this prompted me to suggest that this year we’d gather as many blog fans as we could and attempt to wrestle victory from the mighty Gill’s. However, I’m afraid it has snuck up on me.

Still, if anyone’s near enough Ballyhaunis (or feels like travelling), you’re more than welcome. Email me and I’ll let you know where the tablequiz.net approved pub is. 🙂

On Wednesday night, the local football club, Ballyhaunis Town FC held a table quiz in The Hazel Bar, Ballyhaunis. Twas nice to have a relatively local quiz to go to – usually I have to drive through Ballyhaunis and then on to Claremorris or somewhere even more exotic.

It’s not often (i.e. never) that I’ve based a post around the raffle that took place on the night but today will be an exception.

Let me explain: as with almost every quiz you’ll attend, this one featured raffle tickets being sold at half-time. Ger was away from the table at this point but myself, my dad and father-in-law all bought tickets (as you do). Normally, neither I nor any of my team-mates ever seem to feature in the prize-winning, when the tickets are drawn out of the hat. However, on Wednesday night, for the first time in my life the opposite problem occurred. Between the three of us with tickets, we won four different prizes! This level of success became embarrassing, to be quite honest with you. My own win came third in the sequence and things were already becoming shameful. Even though there were several bottles left on the table, I opted for some chocolates!

Bizarrely, we weren’t the only multiple winners in the draw. Two other fellows in the bar ending up winning two and three prizes. I think the rest of the crowd were on the verge of revolution by the end!